IN CONVERSATION:

Joe McGill, the Radio Kerry broadcaster from Ardcost, featured on Wednesday February 7, in his ‘In Conversation’ programme, Valentia’s Des Lavelle.

Des, who operated many tours to the Skelligs and who is now in his 84th year, came across clearly and distinctly in the airwaves as he outlined his life and times.

He is the son, grandson and great grandson of a Lighthouse family and was in his time an author, historian, diver, photographer, lecturer and ornithologist.

He explained to Joe that he and the

late Lifeboat Cox Jeremiah O’Connell were the very first people to run Skellig tours and that he also opened up the island to visiting divers in which up to date diving equipment and facilities were made available to them.

He recalled the closing of the Cable Station in Knightstown in 1966 which resulted in his losing of his job there, a job of a period of sixteen years and three days. However, despite this major change in his working life, he was determined not to leave Valentia and continued to live there to the present day.